Few temples and a haunted land - Part One.

Temple Dome has sculptures of gods all over (Left)
Temple has its own cow farm (Right)

An unplanned backpack trip to an offbeat location has been on my wishlist for a long time. Time, situation and willpower where the reasons keeping me back until now.

I went through a list of qualified places for my trip. I had 3 days in hand, as it was a long weekend including Friday January 26 (Republic Day). I wanted to start my traveling spree with a great location which most of my friends haven't visited yet.

I like to explore less popular locations and try to view places from a different angle. I think my passion for photography has something to do with it.

Dhanushkodi came as a suitable choice for the trip, as it was offbeat, vast and I had seen the van ride in many movies and photos and I was really excited for this ride through the sea road.

Initially, I planned a solo trip as I had no itinerary or what so ever. It's really tough to make people agree to stupid plans (no plan actually). But along the run, Arshad wanted to join me. He was also hoping for a similar trip.

I wanted to check out my new mobile phone camera, so I decided not to take my DSLR for the trip. Taking a DSLR is one of the important choices I have to make when planning a trip, as it takes up a lot of space and it craves more attention and care.

On googling we found out that we had to make a pit stop at Madurai, as there was no direct transport available to Rameshwaram. Without further thinking, we booked the cheapest + easiest option. We booked a KSRTC Bus to Madurai.

On the Journey day, a very late bus reached us around 11:15 PM (supposed to come around 10:20 PM) at Kozhikode Bus stand. it was a good thing we booked our tickets as the bus was unusually crowded due to the holidays.

After a night full of suffering and struggle, we reached Madurai in the morning. We were planning a low budget trip, so we suppress the urge to take an auto and took a bus to Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple (even when we ware really tired due to the bus journey).

Meenakshi Amman temple was the first pitstop. After a long search around the temple sides, we found what we think was the cheapest room. We were offered only an hour to freshen up. we took rest for half an hour and freshened up.

There where basically three things we had to do here, visit the temple, drink Madurai's famous "Jigarthanda" and find us a ride to Rameshwaram, our second stop.

I took a quick visit to the temple only to find out that the queue to the temple went as long as it can. I stayed in the queue until we reached the temple complex. I was happy the queue was moving fast when suddenly it stopped for a half hour long pooja. I left the queue and joined Arshad who was waiting near the temple pond.

We sat there enjoying the ambiance and watched other for few minutes. Once we got out we were on to the next 2 items on our list. The 01:30 PM train clashes with Arshad's Friday prayer time, so we decided to take a bus to Dhanushkodi. As there were few more hours till the prayer time and there was a mosque close to the train station, we decide to take rest at the railway station. Our mobile phones were also out of juice and needed charging.

Near the mosque, there was a small stall selling Jigarthanda. We decided to strike off the second item in the list from this shop. It was a nice drink, but being folks from Calicut the drink was nowhere comparable to Bhaskarettan's Milk Sarbat.

Madurai Jigarthanda- Signature drink

All photos are taken with a Oneplus 5t. And they are not edited expect for the watermark.

I took shelter at the railway station when Arshad went for the prayers.

While I was waiting in the station, an old grandma came and sat close to me. She looked all around and sat there for a while, and then she laid down. Maybe she was hunger and tiredness.

I went to buy provisions for our journey from the store nearby. I bought a bottle of water and 2 packets of biscuits. Grandma was fast asleep by the time I was back. Once Arshad was back after prayer I kept one of the biscuit packets close to her and we left immediately.

I believe giving back to our community and its people is a part of our duties rather than a service.

From there we took another local bus to the bus station from where we boarded a bus to Rameshwaram and started another 4 hours long Journey.